Studies of structural and morphological characteristics of flower-like ZnO thin film and its application as photovoltaic material

摘要

In this work a new method has been employed to synthesize nanocrystalline ZnO powder under hydrothermal conditions at 80 C using aqueous Zn(NO _3)_2·6H_2O solution and diethylamine (DEA) as the starting materials. The ZnO powder prepared by this novel method was characterized by XRD, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), FTIR and UV-vis techniques. Calculation based on XRD data revealed ZnO particles to be of nanometer size (～33 nm). The ZnO powder was subsequently used to make its thin film which exhibited flower like morphology when examined by SEM. Thin ZnO films were sensitized with N719 dye, (Bu_4N)_2[Ru(dcbpyH) _2(NCS)_2], and used as photo-anode to construct sandwich type dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). With such cells, V_(OC) = 0.680 V, J_(SC) = 0.61 mA cm~(-2), fill factor = 0.43 and overall conversion efficiency η = 0.23% were achieved on illumination with visible light (80 mW cm~(-2)).